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Attack at market in China kills 31

Urumqi was the scene of a railway bomb attack late last month that killed three.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, police officers stand guard near a blast site which has been cordoned off, in downtown Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Thursday.(Photo: Cao Zhiheng, AP)

BEIJING — At least 31 people died and over 90 were injured Thursday when attackers drove two cars into shoppers, and threw explosives, at an open-air market in the northwest Chinese city of Urumqi, state media reported.

China's Ministry of Public Security called it a "violent terrorist incident."

The attack marks the latest and deadliest of several recent attacks in the restive region of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital. Attacks have also taken place elsewhere in China.

Authorities have blamed these attacks on terrorists and separatists seeking independence from China for Xinjiang. Some of its native Uighur people oppose Beijing's rule and chafe at government policies they complain repress their culture and religion.

State news agency Xinhua reported witnesses saying that two vehicles ploughed into people in the market at 7:50 a.m. Thursday local time. "Explosives were thrown out of the vehicles. One of the vehicles exploded in the market," said Xinhua.

Photos posted by witnesses on Chinese social media sites offered glimpses of the chaos and carnage in Urumqi, about 1,550 miles west of Beijing. One photo showed three bodies on the back of a truck; others showed injured people on the ground, where fruit and vegetables also lay scattered around, and a burning vehicle was later removed by authorities.

A photograph from the social media website Weibo shows a security officer working at the scene of an attack on May 22 at a market in Urumqi, Xinjian Uygur Autonomous Region, China. Thirty-one people were killed when a group of attackers drove vehicles into a crowded market, running over shoppers as they threw explosives. Weibo.com

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a police officer walks near a blast scene in downtown Urumqi on May 22. Attackers crashed a pair of vehicles and tossed explosives in an attack near an open-air market. Cao Zhiheng, AP

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The recent pattern of violence "suggests an escalation both in attacks and the conflict in a societal sense between the Uighur and the Han, which in some ways is unprecedented in scale," said Michael Clarke, an expert on Xinjiang at Australia's Griffith University.

While Xinjiang is home to the Uighur minority, a Turkic-speaking, mostly Muslim people, most residents of Urumqi are Han Chinese, members of China's majority ethnic group, who have flooded into Xinjiang in recent decades, stirring long-held tensions. Ethnic riots in the city in 2009 killed nearly 200 people, mostly Han.

Previous violence in Xinjiang targeted the state, notably through attacks on police stations, but assailants now increasingly target public places, and not particular individuals, which is "a hallmark of modern terrorism," said Clarke. "These low-technology, even opportunist-type, attacks on more public targets are difficult for any state to combat," he said.

On April 30, the last day of a visit to the region by China's Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, assailants used knives and explosives to attack passengers at an Urumqi railway station in Urumqi, killing one and wounding 79. Xi vowed a long-term security crackdown.

China's government has long hoped that with enough investment and growth in Xinjiang, "they will get along," but such harmony remains elusive, said Christopher Johnson, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

An attack in Beijing last year, and a massacre with knives in southwestern Kunming this March, show that "the Uighurs are now beginning to operate outside of Xinjiang, a major change in their operational tactics," said Johnson. "They have a logistical network the government is not aware of," he said.